Your Inner Fish series free to watch online!

Our really cute fish ancestor

For those of you who have not meet the amazingly adorable Tiktaalik, you’re missing out on meeting one of our earliest fishy relatives.

Plus look at that face!!

Neil Shubin, the paleontologist who found Tiktaalik, wrote a book about his findings a couple years ago called Your Inner Fish.

I highly recommend the book if you ever get the chance, but he also did a multi-part series on PBS by the same name which is now free online. I ended up rewatching the first episode tonight at work and still found it compelling and fascinating, even though I was watching it for the second time. I’m glad I did, because I forgot how well crafted the series was, even as a fan.

The series came out last year and Dr. Shubin was featured on It’s Okay To Be Smart, a fantastic YouTube channel about all kinds of scientific topics. On that episode, Shubin talks a little bit about the gene responsible for finger development in animals, and how they manipulated it to grow extra digits on chickens. It’s mad scientist level awesome.

The show is broken down into three parts each about an hour long: Your Inner Fish, Your Inner Reptile and Your Inner Monkey. Each segment takes the viewer on a journey through our evolution to reveal the leftover traits we have as humans that can be traced back to each of these key stages. Dr. Shubin does a fantastic job explaining these complex aspects of evolutionary biology in an energetic way, keeping you engaged and interested. Graphics are used while he talks about the complex structure limb formations and genes, how the jaw is formed and so on, to clearly illustrate exactly what he is explaining.

His enthusiasm about paleontology and evolution mirrors that of Neil DeGrasse Tyson when he talks about the stars; you can’t help but be sucked into the wonder and awe of the science.

You can watch all three episodes of Your Inner Fish here!!

Now, if you have completely fallen in love with how absolutely adorable Tiktaalik is, which I don’t blame you, then please get this song stuck in your head so we can sing it together sometime.

Oh, and happy Hanukkah!!